Do Creationists Publish in Notable Refereed Journals?

Niles Eldredge wrote that no author who published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly “has contributed a single article to any reputable scientific journal.”

In his book The Monkey Business (1982) paleontologist Niles
Eldredge wrote that no author who published in the Creation Research
Society Quarterly “has contributed a single article to any reputable
scientific journal” (p.83). Apparently Eldredge couldn’t be bothered
to glance at the Science Citation Index or any other major science
bibliographic source.

Developmental biologist Willem J. Ouweneel, a Dutch creationist
and CRSQ contributor, published a classic and widely cited paper on
developmental anomalies in fruit flies (‘Developmental genetics of
homoeosis”, Advances in Genetics, 16:179–248, 1976). Herpetologist
Wayne Frair, a frequent CRSQ contributor, publishes his work on
turtle systematics and serology in such journals as Journal of
Herpetology, Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Science, and
Herpetologica.

In their study of creationist publishing practices (‘The Elusive
Scientific Basis of Creation ‘Science””, Quarterly Review
of Biology60:21–30, 1985), Eugenie Scott and Henry Cole
surveyed the editors of 68 journals for the period from 1980–1983,
looking for creationist submissions. Out of an estimated 135,000 submitted
papers, Scott and Cole found only 18 that could be described “as advocating
scientific creationism” (p.26).

Scott and Cole were not looking for papers like the following:
In 1983, the German creationist and microbiologist Siegfried Scherer
published a critique of evolutionary theories of the origin of
photosynthesis entitled “Basic Functional States in the Evolution of
Light-driven Cyclic Electron Transport”, Journal of Theoretical
Biology104: 289–299, 1983, one of the journals Scott and Cole
surveyed. Only an editor who had a complete roster of European
creationists, and the insight to follow the implications of Scherer’s
argument would have flagged the paper as “creationist”.

How many papers did Scott and Cole miss? Let’s look at 1984,
one year past the end of their survey. Would Scott and Cole have
turned up “Enzymic Editing Mechanisms and the Origin of Biological
Information Transfer”, by the creationist biochemist Grant Lambert
(Journal of Theoretical Biology, 107:387–403, 1984)? Lambert argues
that without editing enzymes, primitive DNA replication,
transcription, and translation would have been swamped by extremely
high error rates. But the editing enzymes are themselves produced by
DNA.

It’s a brilliant argument for design. Lambert understandably
counts on some subtlety and insight from his readers, however.
Lambert doesn’t “explicitly” wave his creationist banner, leaving the
dilemma as “an unresolved problem in theoretical biology” (p.401). By
Scott and Cole’s criteria, such papers don’t really count. By any
other reasonable criteria, however, they do.

Dr D. Russell Humphreys,
a physicist working for the prestigious Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque,
New Mexico (who is involved with the laboratory’s particle beam fusion project,
concerning thermonuclear fusion energy research) is a board member of the Creation
Research Society. He has about 30 published articles in mainstream technical
journals from 1968 to the present. In the last eight years a lot of his work
has been classified, so there has been less of it in the open literature.

His most recent unclassified publication is a multiple-author
article in Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 63(10):5068–5071, October 1992, “Comparison of experimental results and
calculated detector responses for PBFAII thermal source experiments.”
I understand that a more recent unclassified article will be
published in the near future.

Creationists such as Humphreys have extensive publications in
mainstream journals on non-creationist topics. As mentioned
previously, the article by Scott & Cole was a search for articles
openly espousing creationism, which is a different matter altogether.
Creationists who publish scientific research in mainstream journals
have found that they can publish articles with data having
creationist implications, but will not get articles with openly
creationist conclusions published. When they attempt to do this,
their articles are usually rejected. Those who are well-known to
evolutionists as creationists have more difficulty even with articles
which do not have obvious creationist implications.

In the summer of 1985 Humphreys wrote to the journal Science
pointing out that openly creationist articles are suppressed by most journals.
He asked if Science had “a hidden policy of suppressing creationist
letters.” Christine Gilbert, the letters editor, replied and admitted,
“It is true that we are not likely to publish creationist letters.”
This admission is particularly significant since Science’s
official letters policy is that they represent “the range of opinions
received.” e.g., letters must be representative of part of the spectrum
of opinions. Yet of all the opinions they receive, Science does
not print the creationist ones.

To say that a “slight bias” exists on the part of journal editors would be an understatement.

On May 19, 1992 Humphreys submitted his article * “Compton
scattering and the cosmic microwave background bumps” to the
Scientific Correspondence section of the British journal Nature. The
editorial staff knew Humphreys was a creationist and didn’t want to
publish it (even though the article did not contain any glaring
creationist implications). The editorial staff didn’t even want to
send it through official peer review. Six months later Nature
published an article by someone else on the same topic, having the
same conclusions. Thus, most creationist researchers realize it is
simply a waste of time to send journal editors openly creationist
articles. To say that a “slight bias” exists on the part of journal
editors would be an understatement.

The Institute for Creation Research published a laymanized
version of Humphreys” article in their Impact series [No.
233, “Bumps
in the Big Bang”, November 1992]. Reference 5 of that article contains
information about the Nature submission.

In the 70s and early 80s, physicist Robert Gentry had several
articles with very significant creationist data published in
mainstream journals (Science, Nature, Journal of Geophysical
Research, etc.), but found he couldn’t publish openly creationist
conclusions. Gentry had discovered that granites contain microscopic
coloration halos produced by the radioactive decay of primordial
polonium. According to evolutionary theory, polonium halos should not
be there. Some believe that the existence of polonium halos is
scientific evidence that the Earth was created instantaneously.

When Oak Ridge National Laboratories terminated Gentry’s
connection with them as a visiting professor (shortly after it became
nationally known he is a creationist) the number of his articles
slowed down, but he continues to publish.

Another example of blatant discrimination is Scientific
American’s refusal to hire Forrest Mims as their “Amateur Scientist”
columnist when they found out that he was a creationist, although they
admitted that his work was “fabulous”, “great” and “first rate”.
Subsequently Mims invented a new haze detector praised in the “Amateur
Scientist” column, without mentioning that Mims was rejected for
this very column purely because of religious discimination. So it’s
hardly surprising that some creationists write creationist papers under
pseudonyms to avoid being victimised by the bigoted establishment. See
Revolutionary Atmospheric Invention by Victim of Anti–creationist Discrimination

Russell Humphreys said in a 1993 interview: “I’m part of a
fairly large scientific community in New Mexico, and a good number of
these are creationists. Many don’t actively belong to any creationist
organization. Based on those proportions and knowing the membership
of the Creation Research Society, it’s probably a conservative
estimate that there are in the US alone around 10,000 practising
scientists who are biblical creationists.” (‘Creation in the Physics Lab”, Creation Ex Nihilo15(3):20–23).

Additional information on Dr D. Russell Humphreys:

Dr Humphreys was awarded his Ph.D. in physics from Louisiana State
University in 1972, by which time he was a fully convinced creationist. For
the next 6 years he worked in the High Voltage Laboratory of General Electric
Company. Since 1979, he has worked for Sandia National Laboratories in nuclear
physics, geophysics, pulsed power research, theoretical atomic and nuclear physics,
and the Particle Beam Fusion Project. Dr Humphreys is an adjunct professor of
Geophysics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego,
a Board member of the Creation Research Society and is president of the Creation
Science Fellowship of New Mexico. He is also the author of the book Starlight
and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe,
Master Books, 1994 (ISBN 0-89051-202-7) which details his white hole cosmology
theory. (See below)

Dr Michael Behe, associate professor of biochemistry at
Lehigh University author of Darwin’s
Black Box, is not even a biblical creationist, but has experienced
blatant censorship simply because he highlights the strong evidence for
an intelligent designer of life. Like Dr Gentry, he wasn’t even given
a chance to respond to his critics—see his Correspondence
with Science Journals.

Scientific American refused to allow Phillip Johnson to defend himself against a vindictive and petty review by the atheistic Marxist, Stephen Jay Gould. So Johnson published Response to Gould on the Internet, from Access Research Network.

Another prominent creationist who publishes in mainstream journals
is Dr Robert A. Herrmann, professor of mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy
in Annapolis, Maryland.

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Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth.